The Endless Struggle Part I

The forest had become an abyss. Night pressed down like a weight, the rain slashing in cold, relentless sheets that blurred vision and deadened sound. The air reeked of wet moss and old bark, the cold biting through layers of soaked cloth like ghostly fingers. Thunder rumbled distant and hollow, vibrating through the earth like the distant heartbeat of something ancient and merciless.

The ground beneath Leopold's boots was treacherous — mud-slick, root-riddled, a graveyard waiting for them. But years of hunting in the ruins outside Vienna, slipping through rubble and crumbling alleyways, had taught him how to move when every step was a trap. It had been survival, not sport — each footfall learned in hunger, each escape a quiet defiance of death in a city that had never cared if he lived or died. His instincts guided him now, muscle memory honed in blood and desperation. The stench of damp rot and the iron tang of blood filled his nostrils, mixing with the primal, metallic smell of his own fear.

Every step became a battle of will. His muscles screamed. His wounds throbbed with every movement. Gor'ka's weight was unbearable, and yet he bore it, her weakening body slumped against him like a dying star — burning with life but fading rapidly.

Behind them, the Krellhunde. Their grotesque forms weaved through the trees, eyes like coals, glowing faintly in the rain-soaked dark. The clicking of their limbs was maddening, sharp as knives scraping stone. The air behind them grew fouler, heavy with the stink of wet fur, old blood, and something sour — the breath of predators too long starved. Closer. Closer.

"Leave her. You cannot carry both forever. But you cannot lose her either. Choose. Fight. Endure."

The voice again. That ancient whisper in his mind — cold, inevitable, the echo of a thousand fallen warriors who had chosen survival over love.

"No..." Leopold whispered hoarsely, doubt tightening his throat. "Not yet... not like this."

But terror gnawed at him. This was not war. This was not battle. This was ritual execution by a forest that devoured the weak.

Gor'ka stumbled once more, her legs buckling entirely. Her body sagged in his arms.

And then, with a voice like torn silk, barely more than a breath, her hand pressed against her belly in a gesture half-conscious, half-instinctual.

"Leopold..." she whispered, her voice breaking. "I don't want to lose them... I don't want to lose you..."

His heart stopped.

Everything fell away. The rain. The forest. The Krellhunde.

Only her words remained.

He staggered, disoriented. His arms tightened around her.

"Gor'ka... no... you can't... not now..it's too soon...to tell."

Her trembling hand pressed against her belly, as if seeking the fragile heartbeat hidden within — a gesture woven deep into the rites of her ancestors, who believed that even in the darkest hour, the unborn could lend their mother strength. Fear swelled in her chest, not for herself, but for the life blossoming in defiance of this nightmare. The pain was sharp, a coil of heat and sickness from the venom coursing through her veins, yet it was the thought of her unborn child that made her throat tighten. She clenched her jaw, drawing on the ancient pride of her people — orcish blood did not break easily. 'Not here,' she thought fiercely. 'Not like this.' She met his eyes, her gaze unfaltering despite the fever-glow of poison.

"It happens faster for us... for orcs... our blood knows... the life is already within me."

His breath caught in his throat.

Children.

His children.

"Then hold on," he whispered, raw and shaking. "Hold on for them. For me."

His fury ignited.

No magic words. No ritual. Just will.

Crimson and steel bled from his skin, rippling like molten veins across his arms and chest. Gor'ka, through half-lidded eyes clouded with fever, saw him become something out of legend — a figure wreathed in burning strands of power, the ground beneath his feet smoking where his steps fell, as if the very earth recoiled from his passage. His aura became a storm around him, crackling with ghostly afterimages of bone and sinew, each step trailing faint echoes of his form like shattering glass caught in wind. His legs coiled with raw energy, shattering the earth beneath him as he rose fully with her in his arms.

Corpus IV — a state of mastery so rare that entire battle-orders would name their champions after those who attained it. To common soldiers and simple folk, such warriors were whispered of like ghosts or demons, their very presence in battle said to break enemy lines before the first blow was struck. In the annals of history, men still whispered the name of Rotger von Hollenfels, the Black Lion of the Vosges, who in the winter of 1179 held the Drachenpass against the beastmen of the Schwarzwald for three days and nights, armed with nothing but a war-axe and his indomitable will. His stand became legend. Such were the monsters birthed by Corpus IV — men who transcended flesh through will alone.

The highest mastery of body magic. Flesh over fear. His aura roared like a living beast, a mantle of burning silver and crimson, wrapping his body in spirals of raw willpower made manifest. It pulsed with every heartbeat, shedding fragments of light like embers torn from a forge. And deep within him, his inner voice bellowed — not calm, not guiding, but commanding, relentless: "We do not stop. Not until the bones shatter, not until the muscles tear. Just as old Meister Halbrand once whispered in the barracks of Vienna: 'Strength is not in the flesh, boy — it is in refusing to fall when all else does.' We pour it all out. Every drop of Mana. Every fragment of strength. We run until there is nothing left but the will to crawl. And even then, we move."

And in that moment, a flash of memory seared through him — the narrow alleys of Vienna, a younger Leopold dragging his battered body through blood-soaked streets, hunted by men twice his size, refusing to fall. Back then he had sworn it, teeth clenched against the taste of blood: 'I will never crawl. I will never be their prey again.' The old hunger burned in his chest: to survive, to outlast, to endure when the world demanded surrender.

And he ran, his heartbeat pounding in his ears like war drums, his breath rasping through clenched teeth, every exhale a raw, burning gasp against the cold night.

He ran as though hell itself clawed at his heels.